The Flux (9 page)

Paul breathed in cigar smoke, wishing this felt like triumph.

P
aul sketched
out plans on his legal pad as he rode the subway back home. The car held the usual mid-morning weekday crowd, a motley mixture of students, late businessmen, and weary retail workers heading into their late shifts.

He’d gotten the job. That was step one. Step three was covering his tracks. Step two, however, involved tracking down the King of New York – no sense scrubbing his trail if the King would just drop another dime on him – and
that
was the tricky part.

Step four was Aliyah. But he wasn’t going to deal with that right now.

He brainstormed solutions for the first three, writing them down. The pad twitched in Paul’s hands. A new sheet flew up, and neat handwriting appeared on the yellow paper, as though written by an invisible pen:

The party of the first part wishes guaranteed confidential access to the party of the second part
.

A notary seal indented itself into the paper, waiting for Paul’s signature.

Paul covered the legal pad, worried someone might see him – but of course, everyone around him had their faces planted in their cell phones. Oscar’s artificially induced good luck stretched out to protect his Flex supplier.

Paul clicked his ballpoint pen and signed the request. A surge of ’mancy left him, but no flux came back; he’d paid for that when he’d brewed that Flex for Oscar a year ago.

“Good,” Oscar said from behind him.

Paul jumped; he hadn’t even seen Oscar enter the car. “I hate it when you surprise me.”

“Ssshhhh.” Oscar placed a thin finger over thinner lips. He leaned back in his seat, looking towards the subway doors with the serene air of a man expecting a grand show.

Only the thin ring of crystals around Oscar’s nostrils told Paul that Oscar was flying high on Flex.

Paul watched Oscar, an unassuming man who did not look like a grand crime boss, but rather a henpecked accountant. Oscar did not acknowledge Paul’s attention; his face was strangely merry, though that might have been the Flex talking. It also explained why he’d left his bodyguards at home; on Flex, the odds were ever in Oscar Gargunza Ruiz’s favor.

Oscar tapped his ivory cane expectantly against the subway floor, adjusting his Panama hat. His olive skin had a stylish tan that Paul envied; he wore a custom-fit suit that reeked of tasteful wealth. He could have been at the opera, waiting for the show to begin…

…and one stop later, dreadlocked college students stormed in, wearing sleeveless Che Guevara shirts. A willowy woman brandished a cardboard sign: THE BREAKDANCER BEAT.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” she cried. “May I have your attention? You may think we are ordinary breakdancers, looking for spare change – but no!”

The woman flipped the sign over: THE BREAKDANCER POETS.

“We are here to blow! Your! Minds!”

Grinning at each other under the assumption that they were blowing people’s minds, two launched into a series of voluminous slam poetry; two more spasmed on the floor in a mockery of dance moves. The others wriggled their way through the crowd, thrusting self-published manuscripts at people.

This didn’t happen often on New York subways these days. But Oscar’s Flex-luck had ensured these students had thought this was a perfectly fine idea right now, and Oscar’s Flex-luck ensured no policeman would arrive to chase them away until Oscar’s conversation with Paul was completed.

“There,” Oscar said, content. “Now no one will overhear our conversation.”

“
Must
you find me without warning?”

Oscar raised an eyebrow. “Preauthorization before making contact wasn’t in the contract. Though I might
make
appointments, if you’d care to manufacture some restriction-free Flex for me…”

“No, that’s all right.” Paul wouldn’t give Oscar a magical drug that could allow his gang to commit the luckiest of murders – so he’d forced Oscar to pre-authorize any usage of the Flex. Oscar had accepted that, only requesting certain drug runs went without a hitch, or that meetings with rival gangs were ambush-proofed. Not things Paul was
comfortable
with, but nothing violent.

Still, Oscar chafed at restraints. And he was smart enough to make his first request
The party of the first part may, at any time, use the drug to locate the party of the second part
no matter where he may be
– a clause Valentine had referred to as “lightly ominous.”

Fortunately, Oscar ruled with a light hand.

“Mr Tsabo, I must insist you report in to me after any Flex-brewing failure. I dislike getting my information from the headlines. Though you
do
tend to make headlines these days no matter what your identity.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said – and he
did
feel sorry. Oscar had always treated Paul with respect. “It’s just – there’s been a lot going on…”

“
I
understand.” Oscar tapped his temple. “The issue is my fellow compatriots.”

“It’s…” Paul wrung his hands. “I know $1.4 million is a lot, but I’ll pay it back…”

Oscar threw his head back and laughed – a loud, generous sound that the poets’ beat-boxed verses about government abuses in Guantanamo Bay drowned out.

“You... you don’t want me to pay it?”

“No, Mr Tsabo. $1.4 million is
not
a lot. You’re a penny-ante slot machine with a Lotto-size payoff. Have you any idea what one batch of Flex does for my business? As investments go, Mr Tsabo, you’re among my cheapest.”

Paul brightened. “So… you don’t care?”

“I didn’t say that.”

The poets began doing a dance, accidentally jabbing subway riders as they whooped in a bad imitation of Native Americans. Paul tried to read Oscar’s face, but those leathery features were impenetrable.

“Well,” Oscar said, relenting. “To be clear,
I
don’t care. Not much. I like you, Paul. You go out of your way to keep our agreements. You could go to war with us – your bureaucromancy could track us down, Psycho Mantis could rain meteor showers down on our heads. And yet–” Oscar shook his head, looking at Paul with unmistakable fondness “–with all that power, you treat this debt not as an inconvenience, but as an obligation to be settled.”

Paul was so relieved, he almost passed out. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Don’t.” Oscar held up his cane. “The issue is, I am not a single entity.”

The poet-dancers started throwing Xeroxed dollar bill confetti.

“I represent a loosely held cabal of conflicting needs. I have bodyguards who covet my power, subordinate dealers longing to best me, superiors who fear my competency. So when I put my faith into someone who doesn’t deliver… well, I begin to look weak.

“Your Flex is worth quite a bit to me, Paul,” Oscar continued, looking grave. “It keeps accidents from happening. But I need results. Soon. Or people will think I’m your bitch. And when
that
happens… well, are we clear?”

Paul shivered. Valentine had told Paul not to worry about Oscar, telling him she could take that “little punk” if she had to – and she
had
bested Oscar once already. Still, something about Oscar’s calm, contemplative nature made Paul tremble.

Valentine’s splashy violence looked good in a videogame cutscene, full of gratuitous shrapnel-filled explosions. Oscar’s pinpoint violence involved silenced guns, never-to-be-unearthed quicklime pits in construction lots.

“How much more credit do I have?” Paul asked.

Oscar unleashed a crooked grin. “You have a plan! Is it a cheap plan?”

“Somewhat. I need another lab – not a big one, but with a decent-sized bag of hematite – and an opal.
A good
opal. Top tier.”

“Top-tier opals are not cheap.” Oscar waved a gloved hand to indicate no expense was a problem for him. “Will you be making Flex for me, with this lab?”

“I’ll be trapping a King.”

Oscar nodded. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

Oscar’s approval convinced Paul that whatever else Oscar was up to, he was not calling in tips on Paul. Which meant Oscar was not the King of New York – which was good, because Oscar made Paul feel strangely content. Oscar was reasonable. He delivered. He made the rules clear. And it was ridiculous that a criminal should serve that purpose in Paul’s life – but by making ’mancy illegal, the government exposed Paul to unthinkable dangers.

In an ideal world, ’mancers would be working for a reliable organization overseen by professionals, properly regulated. Something to help them manage their flux, keep civilians safe.

A school, to teach Aliyah.

A place both Imani and Paul would feel comfortable sending people to.

Instead, Paul had to ally himself with criminals, worry about his own protection. As a ’mancer, no law could shield him.

Oscar contemplated the costs. He watched as the breakdancers did the Worm up and down the car, while the poets donned priests’ collars and wore paper manacles of Xeroxed cash, shrieking, “
The power of money compels you! The power of money compels you!
”

“I’ll get you the equipment on one condition,” Oscar whispered.

“And that is?”

The pad twitched again. Paul read the additional clause.

“I think we can manage that,” Paul murmured, signing off on the new agreement. He felt a tingle as a surge of newly authorized luck flowed from Oscar’s Flex-fueled body somewhere further down the subway line.

The car jerked to an abrupt stop. The people seated were
almost
flung forward; the people riding held on to their straps. But the subway poets, who were not at all paying attention, were flung bodily into the back door.

Oscar raised his white-gloved hands and applauded.

V
alentine had insisted
on driving them all to the Flex lab, and had made a conscious effort to clean up her beater of a car. She’d removed the usual tide of crumpled Burger King bags from the floor, and had even bought a Donkey Kong-shaped air freshener to hang off the cracked rear-view mirror.

What she had
not
done was vacuum the seats. There were dead ants on the car seat that had gotten mired in an old milkshake stain.

Valentine looked at Paul. “Everything OK?”

Paul contemplated what that sticky mess would do to his suit.

Then he got in the car.

Paper and plastic crunched behind him. There was no
seat
visible any more, just garbage so high that Aliyah spread herself out in it, thrust her arms into the detritus, moved her arms back and forth.

“Look!” she cried. “I can make garbage angels!”

Valentine started to laugh, but muffled it when she saw Paul’s disappointed stare.

“You couldn’t clean out the back seat, too?” he asked.

“Hey, I didn’t think we’d have kidtacular company today. Hasn’t been SOP to bring the munchkin along to our drug brews before.”

“But you went to the effort to clean out the front seat,” Paul spluttered. “Why not just keep going, and… and do the… do the whole…”

His argument wilted under Valentine’s oblivious gaze. She squinted her remaining good eye, trying hard to follow his argument, but not quite getting there – it really
hadn’t
occurred to her to clean beyond the absolute minimum of what she had to.

Paul looked in the filthy back seat. Valentine had lost her apartment to flux, doing ’mancy to try to save Paul’s ass from an incoming SMASH team, and then she’d slept in that garbage-strewn car for three weeks while she’d hunted Paul down to save him.

So Valentine’s car was a little dirty.

He reached back and peeled a desiccated Twizzler out of Aliyah’s hair.

“Thanks for the ride,” Paul said.

Valentine brightened. The embarrassment vanished, replaced with bonhomie.

She stuck one bruised elbow out the window as Aliyah felt around for the seatbelt – and then turned on the
Halo
soundtrack and pulled out into the street.

Paul never asked how Valentine managed to afford a car in New York City, a place infamously hostile to vehicles, but he suspected some usage of videogamemancy. They drove, the engine seizing up sporadically, to the place Oscar had designated as today’s Flex lab.

Paul wished he’d rented a nice car for the occasion. Normally he shrugged off Valentine’s sloppiness, but today required scientific rigor.

If they couldn’t track down the King of New York and neutralize him, then David would utilize the King’s hints a lot better than Lenny Pirrazzini had.

Paul would have felt better in a nice rented Lexus. Something
professional
. Valentine’s cheap car reminded him all their efforts were a ramshackle improvisation.

“Surprised you didn’t set up the location yourself,” Valentine said as Paul consulted his notes for the address. “Usually, you’re all about getting your control-freak on.”

“I’m isolating variables. If this turns up nothing, then I’ll choose the next lab.”

She winked at him jovially, then screeched out of the way of a delivery truck.

“Whoo,” she said. “Winking and driving when you have one eye is
not
recommended.”

They pulled up next to an abandoned pharmacy. Paul pulled the key out of the envelope he’d sealed last night and marked, “SITE KEY.” They let themselves in and waited for Quaysean and K-Dash.

Aliyah puttered around the shop for a bit, bringing back everything the old store owners had left on shelves, winding up with a pile of dusty candy bars and crumpled Ex-Lax.

“I need my Nintendo.”

Paul didn’t look up from his checklist. “I told you, Aliyah. No videogames today. No ’mancy at all.”

“I don’t
want
to do ’mancy. I just might
need
to do ’mancy.”

Valentine took a bite of one of the dusty candy bars, spit it out. “You don’t get your Nintendo. But if you practice, and get very good like your Aunt Valentine, then you can do videogamemancy
without
holding a controller in your hand.”

“I said I don’t
want
to do ’mancy!”

“You won’t have to today,” she said, taking Aliyah’s hand and leading her away. “This is just like that
Walking Dead
episode – the one where they were holed up in the pharmacy, all the zombies ready to rip their tender flesh to pieces?”

“You let her watch...” Paul said.

Valentine looked aggrieved. “I wouldn’t let her watch the
show
, Paul. This was the
game
. Anyway, Aliyah, let’s play hide-and-seek.
Tag!
”

“That’s not the way hide-and-seek–” Aliyah protested, then ran off, giggling, after Valentine.

Paul watched as the two darted through the aisles, giggling madly, just another girl and her crazy aunt playing on a lazy afternoon. Paul ached to join them; as a ’mancer family, they had so few moments of fun. Imani had loved this raw joy, making up games with nothing more than two hands and an imagination…

…and the kind that Aliyah could never have as long as Imani didn’t know what was going on.

Then he remembered he was here to cover his trail so Imani’s husband couldn’t track him down.

Before he could ponder that too much, Quaysean and K-Dash pulled into the abandoned strip mall’s parking lot. They kissed in the front seat of the U-Haul before hopping out, and though Paul was doubtless not meant to see that, the gesture still somehow made Paul happy. At least
someone
had a love life.

Paul went out to meet them. “Did you get all the paperwork?”

Quaysean handed over a thick manila folder, rubber-banded to keep everything together. “The U-Haul truck rental forms, the ownership forms for this store, the receipt from where we bought the desk, the receipt from the alembics and the silver knives–”

“Each bought at a different store?”

“Yes, Mr Tsabo. The only hitch was the, uh…”

“The hematite.”

Quaysean scratched the back of his head. “Yes.”

“Because you didn’t buy it.”

“It’s, uh… no legal transaction, to be sure, Mr Tsabo. That shit is guarded.”

“Our hematite always arrives in factory-sealed bags. It fell off a truck somewhere, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll need to write down everything involving the truck it came off of. The guard you bribed to look the other way, the company you retrieved it from, the day and time of the transaction, how much you paid.”

Quaysean paled. “I’m not... Oscar doesn’t like paper trails the way you do…”

Paul squeezed Quaysean’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll burn the evidence once we’re done. I just need it for today.”

It was gratifying, to see the trust Quaysean had in Paul. It reciprocated the trust Paul had put in Quaysean. The simplest way of checking Oscar’s organization for a mole would have been to tell Oscar to assign different bodyguards to the next brew, leaving K-Dash and Quaysean in the dark – but that would have implied that K-Dash and Quaysean were untrustworthy, and Paul didn’t want Oscar to think poorly of them. Paul suspected that once someone instilled a doubt in Oscar, that doubt never faded.

No. He would try literally every other approach before he tested their loyalty.

Paul turned his attention to K-Dash, who was removing the opal from the dashboard.

“You kept that glued to your odometer the entire time, correct?”

“Yes, Mr Tsabo. No breaks yet.” K-Dash flashed a gold-toothed grin from behind the windshield and held up the opal –it was top grade, came in a small adhesive case you could stick to any ’manceable surface. Its silver-flecked surface, polished flat, was intact.

“And it’s unbroken?”

K-Dash stuck the black-and-gold case out the window, offering it to Paul; Paul estimated its worth around $50,000. Opals themselves weren’t rare, but ones pure enough to crack in the presence of ’mancy were. Uncracked ones were rarer still, as angry ’mancers often went after opal manufacturers.

“But,” K-Dash said, clambering down from the U-Haul, “I brought the most important thing of all.”

He proudly displayed a tray of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Valentine lunged for a double handful of Vanilla Kremes. Paul took the chocolate glazed, smiling despite himself.

K-Dash knelt next to Aliyah, holding the tray in her direction. It looked absurdly incongruous, this lean-muscled, tattooed gangster with a do-rag offering a tiny girl a donut, but it was also somehow heartwarming.

Aliyah snorted through her nose.

“If you’re giving information to the King,” she said, “I’ll hurt you.”

K-Dash cringed. He knew Aliyah had once murdered a ’mancer in order to protect her father, and that danger rolled off her in waves. Quaysean moved to stand behind his partner, and Paul saw the absurdity of the situation: a professional enforcer, moving to protect his lover from an eight year-old girl.

But that eight year-old girl, almost nine, was very very dangerous.

“…the
fuck
?” Valentine wrenched Aliyah around to look her in the eye. “How
dare
you talk that way to our friends?”

Paul was relieved: Aliyah still had the decency to be shocked.

“
Someone
’s tattling on us,” she explained, hurt that Valentine wasn’t on the same page. “Why couldn’t it be them? They’re mun–”

She bit her lip, remembering at the last second that Daddy didn’t like that word.

“Because if
we
get busted, so do
they
!” Valentine roared, her face covered in fading bruises. “And those ‘mundanes,’ little girl, have done more to help us than
you
ever have. They bring us equipment. They protect us. They bring us... they bring us donuts, for Christ’s sake.”

Valentine thrust a glazed donut into Aliyah’s hands. Aliyah quivered, not quite willing to cry.

“Whereas
you
, Miss Prissypants ’mancer – all
you’ve
ever done for us is get your goddamned Daddy fired. You won’t listen when we tell you not to dump flux on us! You’ve hurt us more than they
ever
will!”

Aliyah turned to Paul, wanting Paul to deny Valentine’s words, and Paul… couldn’t.

Valentine mouthed at him:
Good cop time?

Paul hated the way Valentine roughed up Aliyah emotionally and then handed her to him for cuddles. He especially hated how effective it was. In the absence of friends, Valentine’s anger was as close as Aliyah got to peer feedback.

“Valentine,” Paul warned. “Back off.”

Valentine held up her hands in surrender, instantly abandoning the approach. As always, Paul wondered how much of these outbursts were theater.

Aliyah, however, looked stricken by guilt. “…did I really get you fired, Daddy?”

“’Mancy has a cost,” Paul reminded her for the ten millionth time. “When you do it, it hurts Daddy. And Auntie Valentine. Do you understand?”

She nodded, looking quite studious. But like any child, Aliyah didn’t understand reality. She could merely recite facts.

Valentine shot Paul a steely glance, blaming him for Aliyah’s ignorance. Paul looked away, not wanting to face her down now.
I don’t want her hurt, but there’s no training wheels in this profession
, Valentine had said – except there were, when Paul was around. By siphoning away her flux, he kept her from experiencing the consequences of her decisions. As he watched Aliyah’s uncomfortable confusion, it occurred to him that maybe he should let her experience a full blast of flux. Just once.

Then he remembered Valentine’s words:
This is magic. She might die
.

’Mancers were rare, simply because most of them got killed by the backlash of their own ’mancy.

He’d find some other way to teach her responsible magic use. He had to.

“And not only is ’mancy dangerous,” Paul continued, “Aunt Valentine is right about something else: K-Dash and Quaysean are our friends.”

Both raised their eyebrows as if to ask,
We are?
Followed by a prideful inhalation:
We are
.

Aliyah shot a mortified glance at K-Dash and Quaysean – then crept close to her father.

“Daddy,” she whispered, pushing her face into his shoulder to hide her embarrassment, “I thought they
worked
for you.”

“I worked for Uncle Kit. Some people you work with are friends.”

She frowned, as if filing this new revelation away somewhere in a large cabinet marked “ON JOBS.” Then she turned to K-Dash and Quaysean – who backed away from her.

“Sorry,” she said.

K-Dash shrugged, a casualness that filled Paul with gratitude. “Ain’t nothin’, little girl.” He extended the tray again, tilting it so it pointed at the glazed donut Valentine had pressed into her hands. “That the donut you want, sweetie? You can take another one, if you want.”

Aliyah took a cruller off the tray.

But when K-Dash and Quaysean headed back to the truck, Paul watched as Aliyah chucked the donut into a sewer grate.